I've attached the detailed Michigan Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Division latest Michigan Bass Season Recommendation to this post. It's 15 pages long. I'm at Outdoorama with limited computer time but I wanted you all to have a chance to review. Read it carefully to understand what it says exactly.
There will be lots of questions and many I still don't have answers for yet. The MDNR FD came up with this idea on their own and presented it to us afterwards. It gives us some of what we want but falls short of Option 4 due to a small vocal minority and their misunderstanding that people that support Option 4 are not supporting more 'harvest.'
The MDNR FD will present this recommendation to the Natural Resources Commission public meeting on March 19th for informational purposes. This meeting will be at the RAM Conference Center at Higgins Lake. I will be there. If you wish to speak contact the NRC on or before the Friday before the meeting at www.michigan.gov/nrc.
The public can still respond to the issue until the NRC can choose to vote on the issue at their April 9th public meeting in Lansing.
We will be setting up a bass fishing work group with the MDNR to try to iron out all the questions and issues with their latest recommendation and/or whatever ends up getting selected by the NRC as the new Michigan bass season, and future issues and opportunities.
The gist of the new MDNR FD bass season recommendation is we would have catch-and-immediate-release (CIR) bass fishing all year on most waters - exceptions might be a few trout waters that are closed to all fishing for part of the year for example.
Catch-and-delayed-release (CDR) bass fishing would be allowed from Lower Peninsula - last Saturday in April until Memorial weekend, Upper Peninsula May 15 until Memorial weekend only for events that have registered on the Michigan Fishing Tournament Information System (MFTIS). The system ONLY contains MDNR-run public access sites, and right now the system only allows 1 bass tournament per public access site per day, first-come, first-serve as always. The system does not guaranty parking or availability.
The MDNR is asking that you enter your results after your event, and it will become mandatory for this early season in the future. Frankly, we need you to enter these results so we have more information on populations for future decisions hoping more opportunity doesn't take so long and as much effort to work towards.
You will want to ask your tournament participants to keep track of how many bass they catch overall too because that is part of the population estimates more so than just whether they caught a limit or not. Your participants will have to have some kind of identification with them so any CO or someone else would know they are in a registered CDR event, meaning they can keep keep bass in their livewell to be released later, while everyone else has to immediately release any bass they catch.
Lots of questions will come up, I know, and as I said we don't have all the answers yet because this is very new and we've only had 1 meeting on it so far.
You can always come down to Outdoorama and ask me questions. I'm here in Novi at Suburban Collection Showplace all weekend in booth 5714 across from Wayne Carpenter - Xtreme Bass Tackle, and I have a copy of the order with me because I'm still going through it too. It just came out publicly a couple nights ago.
Outdoorama is today (Friday) noon until 9:30pm, Saturday 10am-9pm and Sunday 10am-5pm.
You're welcome to comment on this recommendation and ask questions. If you think of any we haven't yet it can be added to the list of things we have to work out if this goes through.
Meanwhile, don't forget to sign our online petition and leave a comment there why you support it too if you haven't already: https://www.change.org/p/michigan-natural-resources-commission-vote-yes-for-michigan-bass-season-option-4
I've said it before: Leave it to the government and uninformed "do gooders" to screw up something so easy as changing the bass season. Frustrating. ::)
Things that seem so easy and clear to some of us apparently confuse the heck out of others... wonder what it's like to be so confused and wanting to make things overly complicated?? Hope I never find out beyond having to put up with it from others... :)
first off - i'll give the DNR credit for overtly catering to the tournament community. secondly, i can appreciate their idealism in the solution.
Lastly - the excessive futility of enforcement seems to be the most practical limiting factor which still leads me down the path of option 4.
I understand. I have in some of the most obvious, outstanding questions that immediately come up with they get their way, not withstanding the issue of people talking about 'special interests.' Not sure when I'll hear back and what effect the questions might have, if any.
We are still pushing for Option 4 as the most supported and most common sense solution. We have over 1,300, maybe 1,500 petition signatures between signed and online so far to help push the issue as people are not afraid of ALL that Option 4 does (except for a few fishing guides and some MDNR fisheries biologists).